Dynasty - Franchise Mode (NBA Live 05)

Dynasty Specifics:
Difficulty: (First two games were Starter, All-Star half of Season and then Superstar the rest of the way)
Sliders: Adjusted to have realistic fouling, though didn't adjust User and CPU Sliders until finding out I could right before the playoffs.
Quarters: 8 Minute Quarters
-No Defensive Three Seconds
-Five fouls to foul out
(Essentially High School Rules ^)
I had simulation on 10 minute quarters so that the computers would still score a normal amount of points and since I only needed eight minutes to get about normal scores in my games.


I recently (like two weeks ago) re-installed NBA Live 2005 and having graduated with a bit of time on my hands determiend to play an entire season (1st of Franchise Mode). I picked the Spurs because I am a big Spurs fan and live in San Antonio. Quickly patched the game and got Andrew's roster update for 2007. Using default rosters I selected the Spurs and was off. The first two games I won big blowouts on starter and then switched to All-Star for the regular season until February when I transitioned to Superstar. I found the perfect global sliders for realism for me on fouls and such but did not discover you can adjust user and cpu sliders until right before the playoffs---when I did start adjusting them (fairly I might add) but I digress.

Early on I realized that my team full of veterans would have to lose quite a few veterans and get younger for the future. I had a number of failed attempted trades at doing this until I finally succeeded in trading with the Seattle Supersonics on 11/15.
First I traded M. Finley (He was fun to play...but at least one veteran shooter had to go to get young talent), M. Bonner (Rode my injured Reserve list), and D. Stoudamire (who I absolutely hated playing with...) to Seattle. In return I got some much needed youth in K. Durant, and Green (both rookies) as well as a make the trade work worthless player in Gelabale who I released a week later.
Durant wasn't as consistent a scorer as Finley and I definitely had some I miss Finley games... most notably a double overtime loss to Miami. Still I had more veterans to get rid of and needed a good, young point guard backup for Parker. On 11/26 I addressed this need trading Robert Horry (who I almost literally couldn't buy a basket with) and D. Johnson (promising young guy, but I had enough SF's) for Aaron Brooks (PG) and Luis Scola. Both performed well for me but I eventually got tired of Scola as some games I had trouble getting him to score so I could collect my 250 dynasty points for everyone scoring (which I collected all but three games the entire season).
In early December I made my final trade getting rid of some big, expiring veteran contracts in exchange for an even bigger (but equal to the others) veteran expiring contract for someone that would help me win now. I traded K. Thomas, L. Scola, and B. Bowen (Something I'd never want the real Spurs to do ) in exchange for A. Jamison. It was basically three 60's for one 78 that could score effectively alongside Duncan or when Duncan wasn't in the game.

With my trading done and the computers not trading at all due to that very unfortunate computer bug on trading in Dynasty mode when you save the NBA News had very little trade action. I kept trying to trade J. Vaughn and a few other players for trade picks from losing teams during the season but always seemed to fail to get them to agree. It was just as well though since my players rostered was down to 12.


My team finished out its first season an impressive 74-8 with a 37-4 Home Record and a 37-4 Away record. Though I did notice my three point shooting was considerably worse on the road and when I had to make comebacks it was generally on the road. Needless to say this was good enough for the best record in the league by quite a bit and home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. During the season I accidentally had AI Assistance on thinking it meant for when the AI occasionally controls your player with the ball. Still despite this not every game was close and I had at least as many blowout wins as close games. Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan were all on the MVP Candidates watch list most of the season leading in the MVP Race.
Not surprisingly all three of them would end up starting on the All-Star Team and K. Durant made the Rookie Challenge where he dominated winning the MVP. Manu Ginobili took home the MVP of the All-Star Game. Manu Ginobili would also take home the Season MVP Award and I had three people make the All NBA Team (Parker, Duncan, Manu) in addition to Durant winning Rookie of the Year and making the Rookie team. Parker and Manu also made All NBA First Defensive Team. Time Duncan Ironically missed out on making a defensive team.
Dynasty points were key to my teams development during the year and the first load I invested was 7200 in a free throw shooting coach as at the time my team was the worst FT Shooting team at 58% (lead by Duncan at like 44%). My team lead the league in freethrow percentage (81%) and I actually managed to get Tim Duncan up to 71% from the line on the season. Early on I focussed training sessions on improving shooting which paid off as Duncan's FT's got better and my guards/posts became more consistent doing what I wanted them to do. A few training sessions in I began splitting between Shooting and Defense and then the last couple I trained conditioning. I ended up doing nine training sessions on the year, opting not to do a last one right before the playoffs since I wasn't sure what I would be doing the next year that I might need Dynasty points for.
Injuries weren't bad for me, Durant missed two games at one point and a few people got hurt in games (including Duncan) but most returned the next game fine though Duncan had to play 3-4 not fully recovered games. A few other teams were hurt by injuries to key players including Miami (Ricky Davis), Detroit (Rick Hamilton), Los Angeles (A. Bynum, P. Gasol), New Orleans (Chris Paul) and various others I forget, a few were long ones and some were short. INjury was set on 50.. I found it very realistic. Only about eight injuries in the games I played about half of them were my teams injuries and the other half my opponents. If you want a fun dynasty mode season injuries are a part of it...I think everyone should play with injuries at least on 50. Nobody important was still hurt come playoff time...well except for Bynum but I don't think he was that important for the Lakers during the dynasty season.

The first round of the playoffs had me facing the #8 Seed LA Clippers who I had beaten four times in the regular season and recently by 10 and 20 points (respectively). The series was an offensive bonanza with different stars coming through for me different games. Most memorable was a game three victory on Los Angeles in which Manu went for 45 and double digit assist numbers. The clippers did a good job penetrating with their guards and I mixed up a number of defenses, some zone, double teams and high pressure to cause them to make just enough mistakes. The result was the only 4-0 sweep of the 1st round in the Western Conference quarter-finals. The rest of the West had some somewhat surprising results as the #2 seeded Phoenix Suns were knocked off by the #7 Seeded New Orleans Hornets 4-3 while the #3 seed Denver Nuggets lost to the #6 seeded Los Angeles Lakers 4-2. Meanwhile the Rockets (#5) and Mavericks (#4) battled it out seven games for the right to play my Spurs with the Rockets coming back from down 3-1 to prevail 4-3 winning the last three games by one (game #5) and then in blowout fashion for games 6 and 7.
In the East the first round was not as interesting as Miami (#1) beat Atlanta (#8) 4-2 despite losing the series opener. New Jersey (#2) swept #7 Toronto 4-0 and Detroit (#3) swept (#6) Orlando 4-0 in blowout fashion. The #4 Boston vs #5 Chicago series was pretty good with Boston winning 4-2.

Second Round: The East
In the East Miami prevailed over Boston 4-1 in a series during which Ricky Davis (Miami) managed to get injured for about the 3rd time of the season. In the other semi-finals it went back and forth with #3 Detroit pulling out the series against #2 New Jersey 4-3 in game seven in New Jersey.
Second Round: The West
#1 San Antonio vs #5 Houston turned out to be more of a series than my previous one (and than I expected). It was a bit high scoring from the get-go. I pulled out the 1st game at home 116-115 down by two with two seconds left and no time-outs by throwing a halfcourt pass to Brent Barry and running up to the line in 1. whatever seconds firing off the game winning three at the buzzer! Game two was also close with Houston missing out on a three at the buzzer that could have sent things into overtime. Final score was 106-103. In game three I came out strong from the start and was dominating before a late Houston rally...still managed to win 115-106 in what would be the "blowout" of the series. The series was closed out in four games despite a late Houston rally to turn it from a blowout into a close game the Rockets still fell short 108-105. Due to the Rockets better perimeter defenders I found myself relying on Jamison and Duncan more than in the previous series as a few of my guards struggled to find their range. In the other Western Semi-Final #6 Los Angeles and #7 New Orleans went seven games with Los Angeles winning the last two games to take the series 4-3.
Western Conference Finals:
Pitting my #1 seeded San Antonio Spurs against the #6 seeded Los Angeles Lakers. The opener was a high scoring affair which saw me win 124-117. Game two featured a Tim Duncan winner at near the buzzer for the 98-97 victory. With that the series shifted to Los Angeles. Game three was a blowout which LA made closer towards the end buy saw me prevail 97-83 despite some rough shooting from a few key players. Game #4 I found myself down by ten with about a minute remaining. Brent Barry had three consecutive 3's to pull me within reach (in a game my outside shooting had been way off) but missed a three at the buzzer that could have sent things into overtime. I was helped by some clutch FT misses from LA during this almost comeback. My Spurs returned to San Antonio determined to close out the series and did just that behind some great performances from Jamison and Duncan winning 106-102.
Eastern Conference Finals:
In the East Miami and Detroit went the distance with Miami winning 4-3 and earning an NBA Finals berth. During this series Ricky Davis recovered from whatever was ailing him previously.

This setup a San Antonio Spurs vs Miami Heat Finals which I have yet to finish thus far but think will be easier than a few of my previous Western Conference playoff series.

I have scouted about 18 rookies over the course of the year and will post information on them, a few I am hoping to maybe snag in the draft while some I don't want/can't get. I will mostly be staying away from rookies that have strong tendencies to get injured. Free agency will also be interesting with Jamison's contract coming up and my veteran J. Vaughan's contract also coming up. Everyone else is under contract though. Apparently I will be getting offers from other teams to take over their franchises.... haven't decided yet if I will do that or not. Things have been a bit easy for my Spurs this year though with some CPU and User adjustments I made in the playoffs I think next year would be more challenging. Will see. I'll probably post my season averages later.

Is there a limit to pictures you can attach into posts? Or none if you host them somewhere else?

Last edited by SWJ06 on Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:54 am, edited 2 times in total.

No limits are enforced by the forum (they all have to be hosted elsewhere, by the way) but I'd suggest using good judgement since not everyone's on a fast connection. I'd also recommend the pictures are relevant since posting a whole lot of random images isn't a great technique for a Dynasty thread.

Good luck.

Well, the NBA Finals turned out to be more interesting than expected in part because I was experimenting with more shooting difficulty settings. I took the opener in a 93-73 rout and proceeded to win the next home game in overtime 121-114. The series then shifted to Miami for three games. In the 3rd game (1st in Miami) the Heat got into some very serious foul trouble which I capitalized on and ended up winning while shooting a lot of free-throws 107-93.
The next two games I proceeded to start off shooting horribly from the field and never quite recover losing 103-88 and 104-89. Game three included Kevin Durant getting injured (later returned the same game) which didn't help my momentum much either. Miami was taking it to me inside as everyone seemed to be able to penetrate almost at will despite numerous defensive schemes attempting to stop this. Game Six we were back in San Antonio and i hoped this would be enough to close out the series, unfortunately it wasn't as I had a very untimely 4th quarter shooting drought and ended up losing 112-100. So here we were game seven in the NBA Finals, I was coming off three depressing losses and a little worried about my championship chances should my poor shooting continue. Luckily I came out strong and pulled away as the game went on. Miami got almost no penetration and I locked down on their outside shooters. In the end it was San Antonio in a rout 100-70 as I got to watch Duncan hoist the Finals Trophy. Duncan ended up being the Finals MVP, despite Manu Ginobili having taken the regular season MVP award. I was excited and ready to start the off-season and use my scouting to get a steal with great potential late in the draft rounds. As I saved and hit being off-season something happened that changed the course of my franchise.
The Knicks offered me their coaching job for 10,000 dynasty points and 5,000 NBA Store Points. I had already max'ed out the Store (buying everything..but what is that longue for?) and had roughly 20k dynasty points to work with from the playoffs (also about 10k from my season accomplishments) so the thought of trying to fix the New York Knicks and having 30,000 dynasty points to do so appealed to me greatly. Thus I began the off-season with the knicks. I only had two free agents to worry about re-signing and I quickly signed F. Jones who I definitely didn't want into a six year deal which was loaded on the back end figuring his rating was good enough that I could use him in a trade. I let my other free agent go (I forget his name he was like 50 rated..) so that I would have room for draft picks.

The NBA Draft caused one problem to begin with---the Knicks had the #4 pick in the draft and I hadn't been planning on drafting a top ten pick so I had focussed more on excellent/good potential guys lower down in the draft. I scrambled during my rookie sessions to check out some of the good potential top picks. Eventually I settled for M. Becker, a rookie Center who could score inside well, had good potential and was generally quite athletic. I was excited about developing him, though as things would have it this wasn't to be the case. I simmed through the free agent signing as I had no cap room, nobody got signed except for a few superstars that had held out and were re-signed by there teams. This lead me to wonder if you don't sign your stars....go into free agency and get some people and then can you sign your guys in free agency at the end (going over the cap). Seems like it might be a cheap way to get good free agents if so. I plan to try it sometime if given the chance.
Now on to the most important part of my off-season the trading days. I tried trades literally every day, sometimes multiple offers were made in the same day. I wanted to remake the Knicks into a team with less undesired contracts, more talent and youth. I got started trading with Atlanta for Joe Johnson and Zaza Pachulia in exchange for Eddy Curry and Jamal Crawford. I decided I liked Johnson more than Crawford and was picking up Pachulia to try and trade him later. I would regret losing Eddy Curry a bit farther down the line but at the time I was confident I could find a good replacement for him.
My next major priority was shopping Marbury and his expiring 21 million dollar contract for a guard that I wanted to play with that was considerably younger. Sacramento showed very high interest in Marbury and I finally managed to setup a trade with them of Stephon Marbury, Mardy Collins, and Wilson Chandler (I think he was one of my rookies...) for Kevin Martin, Kenny Thomas, and Lorenzen Wright. That done I decided to get a center to my liking and traded F. Jones and Z. Pachulia for M. Okur giving me some size and shooting touch down at the center spot. I had one notable problem at this point though as I had eight C/Pf's and only six SF/SG/PGs. With a few weeks left in the offseason I began to almost desperately shop my post players. I found a taker in Minnesota as I traded David Lee (PF), D. Diop (C) and J. James (C, crappy rating...expensive contract) in exchange for K. Snyder, G. Buckner, and B. Chang (A Rookie who could shoot).
I still needed a solid back-up point guard and with that in mind I traded with Memphis Q. Richardson, M. Becker (R, one of my top draft picks), and N. Robinson for M. Conley and D. Milicic. I figured with training I could make Milicic playable (Remember the 30k dynasty points and lots of planned team sessions) and Conley would be the perfect backup PG. I then traded with Utah to get another shooter giving up K. Snyder (I Don' play with him very well) and B. Chang (R, acquired from Minnesota earlier). I finished out my trading thinking about my year before and the huge gains Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker had made under my spurs tutelage. I then proceeded to finally get the Spurs to agree to a trade deal on the last day of the off-season---a deal that in hindsight might not have been the best one I could have gotten. I traded. Mehmet Okur (83, highly coveted by the Spurs), Kevin Martin (81, also highly coveted by the Spurs) and Kyle Korver (65 I think) in exchange for Manu Ginobili (Had risen to 90) and Tony Parker (was 83) and Ian Mahinmi (I developed him a lot the year before...still relatively low rating though).

So my knicks roster now stands at:
Starting Lineup (might change it later):
Name POS Rating Years Pro
D. Milicic PF 63 5
Z. Randolph PF 81 7
J. Johnson SG 88 7
M. Ginobili SG 90 6
T. Parker PG 83 7
And for my Bench:
M. Conley PG 75 1
Kenny Thomas PF 63 9
M. Carroll SG 59 5
J. Jeffries SF 57 6
G. Buckner SG 56 10
I. Mahinmi PF 56 1
M. Rose PF 52 12

I used my 30,000 dynasty points on first and foremost a free throw coach for the year (since i noticed last year they count for playoffs too... and I had two guys in the 50's on their FT ratings). I then did about seven sessions on shooting 100% which resulted in some HUGE improvements. My worst FT shooter is 65 and 2nd worst (Milicic) is 70 now... as opposed to 50 and 55 before. But yea all around everyone shoots better now. I also trained offense some, mainly to get a few people's passing ratings up. I have a few old guys I wasn't planning to keep but I think my roster is mostly set at this point. I am considering moving Joe Johnson to the bench so that he can win Six Man of the Year and also so I have more firepower off the bench, plus I could play him more at SG then. My team is off to a bit of a rough start losing 88-86 to the Houston Rockets, and losing 91-86 to the San Antonio Spurs. I then rebounded against the LA Clippers winning 113-85 before losing to in-town rivals New Jersey in a game where I went cold shooting at the end 114-106. They had far too many alley's.

So yea, off to a forgettable 1-3 start, but I am getting the hang of the new guys, Parker is averaging about a 10/10 double double on his assists. My post players are playing by committee and Johnson and Manu are caring the scoring load at around 20 a piece. I will post more later when there is more to post. Hopefully my Knicks are championship bound like the Spurs of the year before.

EDIT: Oh yea, it is obviously on Super-Star difficulty for all of this season and here on out.

Try to post images and do things one by one like lets say your off season,
Post each detail about it and continue slow and i enjoy your dynasty but don't put large paragraphs like that or you are banned cuz dats not good and try to put recAps and player images and thats it.
But i see that this NBA live has Dynasty points then Salary Cap so i suggest getting a patch to enable the salary to make it more realistic and i suggest to look at my dynasty for ideas and help.Please click below at where it saids Wizards Dynasty for info. Good Luck.

Try to post images and do things one by one like lets say your off season,
Post each detail about it and continue slow and i enjoy your dynasty but don't put large paragraphs like that or you are banned cuz dats not good and try to put recAps and player images and thats it.
But i see that this NBA live has Dynasty points then Salary Cap so i suggest getting a patch to enable the salary to make it more realistic and i suggest to look at my dynasty for ideas and help.Please click below at where it saids Wizards Dynasty for info. Good Luck.

lol banned? As you see, he isn´t doing like the other dynastys here , he´s doing it for himself, at start it wasn´t even in this section.

SWJ06 I like your new team, but I really hate one thing, that you bringed Ginobili with you to Knicks, I really hate him, but still nice lineup you got now

Oh sorry lol I really don't know what happens if you write big posts......Aaaa just being stupid

I would totally read that, but your paragraphs are too long. Don't feel pressured to post pics though. All of these dynasties look the same lately, and I like how this is a simple one that this section was built on.

Hey could you answer my question which is where did you get Andrews 07 rosters update for 2005?!

And, your Dynasty is mad as! i simulated 25 years 1 game b 1 game in intervertion i made the trades and finished with 9 championships and i can't remember the names but heres the lineup i had after 25 years!

I was the Los Angeles Lakers

Position/Overall/Years Pro/Height/Number Drafted/Team Drafted

C/79/3/6"11'/28/Wizards
PF/88/4/6"8'/19/Lakers
SF/69/1/6"7'/26/Lakers
SG/92/3/6"6/1/Lakers
PG/77/9/6"3'/Cant remember the draft team or number picked!

How it may be first year I to sign with an other team?(dynasti Mod)..